TikTok baffled by 'AI generated' 1900s dance routine

A video of four theatre students' black-and-white '1900s' TikTok dance has gone viral - leaving some confused viewers unsure whether it was actually generated by AI.

The 15-second clip, which shows the female quartet dancing to "Tell Your Girlfriend" by Lay Bankz, was posted on 28 April and features the group wearing 19th-century dresses and dancing in front of the SS Great Britain in Bristol.

In a re-post of the same clip on 4 May, another TikTok user - shimajiofficialz - shared a colourless filtered version of their dance, leaving users baffled by the combination of "old" footage and music from 2024.

The edited clip, which now has 29 million views and 5 million likes, sparked comments including, 'AI is way too powerful', and 'Is this AI or real?', while one bemused user simply asked, 'How is this even possible?'

Others joked: “GRWM to go to titanic” and “POV 2060 kids looking at our old TikTok videos in the future."

The original TikTok was posted by four students (who are very much alive today!) from the Bristol Institute of Performing Arts at the end of April.

Erin McGerty, Evie Coombes, Sophie Cook, and Aimee Olley are second-year musical theatre degree students at the Bristol Institute of Performing Arts.

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They told Yahoo News the video was filmed on 22 April, and it was Coombes who originally showed them the dance. They said filming the viral video was "difficult" because of their dresses. Olley said: "We had like five underskirts on, so as you can imagine, it was quite hard to move around."

The students said they found the suggestions they were AI "bizarre", pointing to the filters used in their edits. "I think it's because of the way that some of the videos have been made, they made it look quite fake," McGerty said.

However, some of the top comments are from people who are convinced AI has been used to edit old footage from history. One person gained 42k likes for their comment, they wrote: “ai is way too powerful now I'm starting to get scared”, and similarly, another person said: “is this ai or real”.

Those who thought it was a video from the 1900s, were only a few decades out.

The footage was filmed in front of the Victorian ship Brunel’s SS Great Britain. The students made the video as part of their “Living History” project, which involves working on the historic ship for a week at the end of May.

They will be "costume interpreters", where they will be in character as passengers from the year 1852 to practice their improv skills.

The restored ship now serves as a wedding venue, a research centre, and one of Bristol’s top tourist attractions, with entry tickets going for £22.